Sunday, March 4, 2012

The Mayan Calendar, History And Their Knowledge In Astrology

By Linda Patterson


In Mesoamerica, a region now divided into Central America and Mexico is where the Mayan civilization began and flourished, about two millennia immediately after identical high civilizations rose in Europe and Asia. Comparable to several other civilizations of the old world, the Maya had advanced astrology from the beginning, which went on to develop over centuries.

The Maya people were able to thrive as well as reach the heights of civilization despite the fact that it had no significant amount of outside influence. Right up until 500 years back, when the Spanish arrived and the Aztec reigned as the prevalent empire, the Mayan calendar was probably the most acknowledged astrological heritage kept in Mesoamerica.

The Mayan Astrology

The understanding of time is very important to the Mayan civilization, therefore, its people held on to astrology as being a symbolic tradition. More than only being a symbol, the Mayan calendar made way for the people to have a better knowledge of time and even space. In Mesopotamia astrology, time as well as space were held in equally given significance, nevertheless both are treated as spatial. The association of time and space was what the Greeks used to gauge distances between planets, the meridian and the horizon. In Mesoamerica, even so, the Mayan people viewed time as a sign, whereby the basic unit is 1 day. The day was measured by the earth's one full rotation, and employed it as a basis of yet several other signs in the Mayan astrology. The photo on the right illustrates Chichen Itza and the sky observatory

Twenty-day Signs

The Mayan people essentially counted their days in sets of 20 repetitively while the Western seven-day calendar grouped days into weeks. This is referred to as the 20-day sign by both the Aztec and Maya. Comparable to our calendars in today's times, the Mesoamerican people at the same time gave symbolic representations for each day. Astrology readers will tell you that your birth date holds the key to knowing and understanding your characteristics or personality. In much the same way, the Mayan calendar conveys as to which kind of character one will have in line with the day she or he was born. It's similar to placing a stamp on somebody. The significant difference is that Mesoamericans followed their belief with more veneration compared to modern astrologers do.

The History Of The 260-Day Astrological Calendar

The Mayan calendar is a combination of 20 day signs creating a 13 cycle which is referred to as tzolkin. This sacred 260-day astrological calendar which is known as tzolkin is followed by other Mesoamerican civilization and that includes the Mayan.

For so long as two thousand years, Mesoamerican astrologers concentrated themselves to tracking every 260-day cycle. The keeping track of every single day was made constant throughout Mesoamerica; if perhaps it was the first of twenty days in Tenochtitlan, the capital of Aztec, then it was equally the first of 20 days in faraway territories of Maya. With that, it made politics, government, trade and economy to thrive with success.

The pinnacle of greatness was reached by all civilizations in Mesoamerica all because of the ancient Mayan astrology. In spite of Maya's decline 500 years ago, Mesoamerica held tightly to the tradition and inherited the extraordinary past of the Mayan people.




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